Loyal As A Dog
by Greer Shlivandas
Summary: Sequel to 'When the Devil Drives': how easily 'screwing' can become 'screwing over'.


**Author's Notes:**

This is set in the same Turks A/U as 'When the Devil Drives'. It happens an indefinite amount of time after 'Devil'- go read that one first if you haven't. 

The Ha'ruu'djesi are a people of my own creation. They live on the peninsula northwest of Rocket Town, and originally migrated out of Wutai. They are insular and highly religious, with a strong concept of sacred pollution. They make their living raising long-coated dogs similar to Irish setters, which they shear like sheep, and the hair is spun into thread and yarn. Other than furs and pelts from hunted wild animals, the people of the FFVII world have no other animal sources of fibers for cloth, which makes dog-raising extremely lucrative. 

And yes, in this settei the people of the world of FFVII commonly eat dog meat. There are sound anthropological reasons behind this. The world of FFVII seems to have no large domesticated animals except dogs and chocobos (or so far as we've seen), and chocobos are simply too valuable for transportation to be wasted as a food source. Our culture has a taboo against eating dog only because we originally domesticated them for hunting and herding, not because we have them as pets today. The FFVII world has no animals to herd, hence no taboo. The Ha'ruu'djesi are an exception; for them the dogs are more valuable alive, as a dead dog grows no new fur. 

This is yaoi, and follows the same precedent set in 'When the Devil Drives'. This fic is my own answer to the increasingly overdone genre of 'non consensual' yaoi. Just remember, boys and girls- the mind fuck is still a form of rape. 

******************************************************************************* 

**LOYAL AS A DOG**

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

"Pity is a whore." - Joyce Cary 

When Tseng awoke, the air was rank with the smell of dogs. 

He lay still, eyelids clamped to his cheeks, wishing beyond desire that maybe, just maybe, this time the scent would remain. Instead of it oozing away into dream like a fog burned off by the sun, he would wake up back in Ruu'djesdek with the curly and fragrant coats of his family's hounds pressed warm against his naked sides. 

/And if wishes were chocobos, moogles would ride./ With a groan, Tseng reluctantly permitted the curs to slink back under the bushes of memory, and peeled open his lids instead to the tacky pretension of what passed in Gongaga for a five-star hotel. Rufus lay sprawled out beside him, doing a Dead Man's Float among the lintballed bedsheets. A scumy film of sweat was congealing along his back, tacked to his skin by the dead air that hung leaden with heat and moisture. Gongagan technology had yet to progress to the level of air conditioning, and the clunky ceiling fans did little more than twirl in their cradles with an incessant WHOP WHOP WHOP WHOP amid sporadic showers of whitewash down onto the bed. 

Beneath that perpetual nocturnal racket was a rather insistent knocking at the door, which Tseng blearily concluded must have been what roused him in the first place. He unhooked his pants from the headboard and jammed both legs into them at once, cursing to the many petty gods of his people his own irresponsibility in falling asleep. Whether conducted from Rufus's bedroom or not, guard duty was still guard duty, and in the wake of a recent rash of ex-Soldiers turning into eco-terrorists, Shin-Ra no longer trusted anyone but his Turks to watch over him through the little death of sleep. 

Even though his midnight visitor was expected, professionalism prompted Tseng to slide his gun into a ready hand as he crept over to the side of the door and threw a cautious look through the peephole. He was unsurprised to discover Reno standing out in the hallway looking sleepy and impatient, his entire person slightly mussed with grime and cobwebs. He greeted Tseng with a rather weary thumbs-up and a slip of his trademark shit-eating grin as the senior Turk opened the door and motioned him inside. 

"Well? How did it go?" Tseng hissed softly as he threw the deadbolt, quietly mindful of his sleeping employer just a few feet away on the bed. 

Trust Reno not to take the hint. "A solid gold ground-shake." he crowed shamelessly, and a bit too loudly for Tseng's peace of mind. "You think he'd mind if I used his washroom?" Reno absently smeared dust across his cheekbones with one hand and jerked a thumb at Rufus's somnolent form with the other. "Look at this crap all over me! Whatever the GGSP spends it's funding on, it sure as hell ain't housekeeping." 

"Go ahead- just don't leave a mess and keep it down. Rufus-sama is finally asleep, and I don't want anything bothering him. I take it they found what they were looking for?" 

"Hojo looked like he was just about to cream in his pants, so they must have turned up something. We brought back half a dozen files and two- whadaya call'em... core samples of mako ice for the Chem department to paw over, so I guess that'll keep them busy for awhile." Neither Turk had been told much about the purpose of that night's raid on Records Department of the Gongogan Geological Survey Project. They had only been given exactly as much as they needed to know- security codes, entrances and exits, the locations of stairs, elevators, cameras, and the like. Beyond a few general rumors that the GGSP was getting close to developing a viable alternative power source to mako energy, and that it was the leading research center in cases of mako poisoning, the Turks had been kept in the dark. Tseng didn't really care to know, either- anything they didn't know couldn't be revealed under questioning. Besides, he didn't know from Ruu'dju why any of this would cause a bunch of pocket-protected labcoats the orgasm of their lives. As long as they did their jobs, he would continue to do his. 

"Just make sure you get it together to make your report tomorrow and file it *right* this time." Tseng followed Reno to the washroom door, still keeping an ear out for Rufus as the junior Turk stripped off his dress shirt and suit jacket to slosh faintly sulfuric Gongagan water onto his face. Reno excelled at anything involving action, but one of his worst habits was ignoring the bureaucratic elements of his job. He had a marked tendency to leave the endless drivel of paperwork that accompanied any assignment to Heidegger's long-suffering secretaries, who had grown increasingly immune to his charm over the years. 

"Not going to let me get away with it this time, are you?" The younger Turk's voice was muffled by the towel as he rapidly wiped water and sweat off in a flurry of motion. 

"And I *shouldn't* have let you get away with it before now, either- Heidegger nearly had my balls off after your little stunt with Don Corneo." 

"Aw, c'mon, Tseng! If you knew what that fat fuck was..." 

"It doesn't matter what 'that fat fuck' was doing! That was an unapproved hit done outside of self defense! Well rid of the pervert we may well be, but that was *damned* unprofessional, letting your personal feelings interfere with doing your job!" Tseng checked the rising fervor in his voice just in time as Rufus shifted around in his sleep, rolling over onto his back and muttering something about interest rates and not wanting any toast. He continued on in a stormy undertone before Reno could respond with any of his mouthy comebacks. "I managed to keep your ass in the clear last time, Reno, but if you ever give me that kind of grief again your butt is going to be back dealing pinka weed in the Sector 3 'Mobile Estates' Trailer Park! Do we *understand* each other?" 

Reno slapped the towel back down over the rack and slung his shirt and jacket over his arm, his skin glowing a faint pink with his mounting annoyance. Like many redheads, he had a tendency to blush deeply whenever he was angry or excited; not merely on his face, but all over his entire body. Tseng steeled himself for the sass he knew would not be long in coming, but in a surprising gesture of restraint, Reno simply shrugged 'Hai, Tseng-san," and slunk off towards the door with the graceless caution of a dog with it's tail tucked between it's legs. /Why is everything dogs all of a sudden?/ 

Reno stopped dead in the doorway, pausing with one hand on the knob as if struck by something he didn't care to remember. With a much put-upon sigh, he turned to gaze reluctantly at Rufus' sleeping figure enshrouded in the sweat- dampened sheets. "You want me to wake up Elena or Rude and have them come relieve you?" 

"No, I'm fine here- you go sleep, Reno." Tseng stifled the urge to push the other man out the door, anxious for this interview to end. He shouldn't have brought up Corneo again; the whole issue should have been left to rot long ago. There was a headache lying in wait somewhere up ahead, and he wasn't looking forward to it. 

"You sure? You looked like you had just woke up when I came in..." 

"Yes, I'm sure!" 

"Don't trust Wonder Boy here with any of the rest of us, do you?" 

Tseng clamped down on the urge to snarl 'no', and rummaged for his best diplomatic facade. "Reno, Rufus is my special responsibility as head of the Turks. Don't question me about this." 

Reno's eyebrows slid right up into his hair, and from the nasty grin that lit up his face like a signal beacon, Tseng knew that he wouldn't be spared his subordinate's biting tongue that night. "Oh, I see... well, you do whatever you want, Tseng. And anytime *you* ever have trouble with 'letting your personal feelings interfere with doing your job', I'll be around if you need to talk." 

* * * 

/I dearly *wish* my personal feelings didn't have to have anything to do with my job.../ 

The brush of a sweaty hand drew him back out of himself, light and sticky as strands of cobweb against the back of his thigh. "Finished 'disciplining your troops'?" Tseng turned to see Rufus awake and propped up on his hands and knees on the bed, reaching out towards him with his apricot hair as night-rumpled as the sheets. 

"I'm sorry I woke you, sir." He turned around to face his employer, eyes dropping automatically out of polite deference. Rufus ignored the apology and smoothed his hair out of his eyes with a habitual flick of his hand, pretending not to notice when the cowlick immediately flopped back down into place. He rose up on both knees to clamp a second hand against the back of Tseng's other leg. 

"Fuck that. Come back to bed." Tseng had know his employer far too long to even consider that it was sleep Shin-Ra had in mind, or that the statement was anything less than a command. Rufus's body curved upward from the bed like a living kanji for desire; yet for all his offered pliancy, there was a forcefulness that underscored it, with fine print warning Tseng to obey. Rufus might order the Turk to take him, but never once had he given anything. 

It was nothing new he was asking for; Tseng had done this with him hundreds, perhaps even thousands of times in the course of his nearly eight years spent with the company. Yet tonight, for some reason, there was no answering heat in himself to the prospect of spending another few hours in carnal entanglement with his boss. Somewhere in the back of his mind the dogs of his people howled, and Rufus' touch withered him faster than an icy bath. 

"Tseng..." Impatience curdled Rufus' tone as he slid his grip up father to pincer the Turk's waist and tugged to pull Tseng down on top of him. He was already half-hard and shifting unconsciously against the Turk's pants leg. He reached for one of Tseng's hands to guide it down to his cock, and glared at it in displeasure when it hung limply boneless and unresponsive as a gutted fish. As much as he knew what was at stake, Tseng could only stare numbly at his employer like an idiot, unable to summon even the pretense of a performance. If Rufus had been more of a top, it wouldn't have mattered, but that just wasn't his dance. 

After a second, Shin-Ra drew back in frustrated petulance, folding his legs under him and dumping his chin in his hand as he gestured for his lead Turk to join him on the bed. "Just sit down, Tseng." He leaned back against the headboard as Tseng seated himself, his face discoloring in chagrin under Rufus' scrutiny. "So, are you going to tell me why there's no 'pop in your pickle' tonight, Tseng? You didn't have time to slip off and see your little blonde bird, did you?" 

"No, sir," he answered carefully. Actually, it was true this time- but he had to be sure Rufus believed that. He didn't want to give Shin-Ra any excuse to make trouble for Elena. His employer tolerated the relationship, but there was still that expectation for both of them that the company would always come first, and 'the company' meant Rufus. 

"I didn't think so, unless you've got a closet two-minute man hiding in you somewhere. You're not coming down with something, are you? And I told you to quit calling me 'sir' when we're in bed together- it makes me feel like I'm my father or something." 

"Yes, si- no, I mean- I'm not getting sick." Tseng paused, mind stuttering clumsily as he searched for the right answer to somehow explain himself to this man, or at the very least get him off his back. This verbal tangoing with Rufus had been going on even longer than their midnight wrestling, but no matter how much refinement he put into his skills at sidestepping those little conversational traps, there were always new ones to be wary of. "I just... had some strange dreams right before Reno returned. I'm sure it's nothing serious." 

"Strange dreams? About what?" 

/About things that you would never understand, *sir*./ "Nothing important- just old memories of my family. I can imagine you would know how bothersome that can be." 

It was a gamble, but Rufus snorted, and for an instant his eyebrows drew together in the cold glare that Tseng knew meant he was thinking about his father. "You bet I can." He leaned back more loosely now, and gestured towards Tseng's shirt pocket, waiting while the Turk produced a cigarette and lit it for him. "I took a look at your records, back when Pop died. You're from Ruu'djesdek, aren't you?" 

Tseng nodded, calmer knowing he would be spared having to dodge Shin-Ra's advances for the time being; though enduring a third degree about his family was hardly welcome. Despite the heat, his hands felt like there was an icy sludge oozing around in his veins and he rubbed the back of one against the other, stifling the urge to have a smoke himself. He had almost quit- he only had one now and again when he had been arguing with Elena- but he still kept a stash with him in case Rufus ran out and required one. "Yes, sir." 

"Huh. You're not actually Ha'ruu'djesi, are you?" Rufus was curious now, idly twisting his weed in his fingers as he watched the fans shred the smoke as it drifted upwards. 

"I'm afraid I am. Everyone in Ruu'djesdek is Ha'ruu'djesi, except for a few traders that keep an eye on the market value of the dogs' coats. They report each year's price to the outside world; it varies, depending on how full the kennels are, and how good the wool quality." 

Tseng remembered well the endless waiting through the late winter months, going with his father and sometimes his mother to the kennels each morning, watching as they ran their fingers through the dogs' coats, inspecting them all over to see if they were ready. The timing of shearing day had to be exactly right- late enough in the cold season that their winter coats had built up to a thick, luxuriant bulk; but early enough that they had not yet begun their summer shedding. He would watch his parents year after year, and yet it still always came as a surprise, when one day when everything would magically be ready and spring would officially begin. 

Throughout all his childhood, everything had revolved around the dogs, and his family knew and called each one by name. It had been his duty to feed them each morning and evening as soon as he could carry the scrap buckets, and his parents had indulgently allowed him to linger over his 'specials'. On cold nights he would slip out to the kennels and curl up in one of the yearling pup pens and sleep with warm little bodies curled up all over him, becoming just another puppy in the heap. 

Due to the highly technological and dust-sensitive equipment throughout Shin-Ra tower, no pets were allowed. 

Rufus was shaking his head. "Somehow I didn't have you pegged as breeding livestock, Tseng. Tell me...", and here his face shifted a little, picking up that slight sneer people get when they are about to inquire into the perverse, "...Is it true that Ha'ruu'djesi won't eat dog meat?" 

"No, we...they don't." 

Hayoo'shuun'kasi, Tseng's father had called them, with the detestation of the sacred in his voice. Eaters-of-dogs. Tseng had grown up hearing about them throughout his childhood; the abominable outsiders who were not Ha'ruu'djesi, gluttons who dared feast on flesh meant only for the gods and whose very touch could render any of Ruu'dju's children unclean. They were 'ginluu'- polluted. Tainted. Impure. A Hayoo'shuun'ka's clothing could not be washed with any Ha'Ruu'djesi's, nor could dishes one had eaten from. A chair or bed or utensil a Hayoo'shuun'ka had used could never be used by any Ha'ruu'djesi again, unless that soul wished to invite a month of purification. Used of any invention or discovery made by a Hayoo'shuun'kasi was strictly forbidden until Ruu'dju's people had devised it on their own, winning them a reputation as Luddites. To marry one of the outsiders was to be banished permanently. They were a desecration of the natural order, the great Other. 

At 29, Tseng had spent nearly fifteen years of his life among them. 

Rufus flicked ash into a plant perched on the bedside table, sliding one of his feet into Tseng's lap. He gestured for the Turk to massage it, wrinkling his nose with a grimace of disturbance at what he had learned. "But why? It's some kind of weird religious thing, isn't it?" 

"Well, yes and no. It's part of the Ha'ruu'djesi way not to eat dog meat because dog meat is food only meant for the gods. But it's also a practical thing- a single dog coat will fetch close to 80,000 gil on a good year; if your average dog lives seventeen years, a small kennel is enough to support a family. If that family were to eat even one of their dogs, it would only feed them for about two weeks at most, and that dog would never produce another year's worth of hair. So it's more- 'economical', to not eat the meat." 

Or Tseng had been told by a sociology professor while he attended the Midgar City College. Even now, it still made him faintly queasy to see people- Hayoo'shuun'kasi at that- attempt to quantify in black and white the culture that had raised him, yoked him, nearly crushed him, and finally lost him to the greater temptations of the world outside. As a young pup, he had listened to stories of Kalm and Nibelheim, of the great Ice Continent and the jungles of Mideel; stories carried to Ryuu'djesdek on the lips of traders come to take the dog's wool out into the world and bring back the trinkets and essentials to last them through the next year. In time, even that had not been enough. When he had finished the seven years of education the Ha'ruu'djesi permitted their children, he had begged his parents to let him go to school in Midgar; to let him cast his lot with the Hayoo'shuun'kasi and become ginluu forever. Just after his fourteen birthday, in their doubtful wisdom and infinite mercy, they agreed. 

"Well, if you put it that way... but I still don't see why they can't just raise more dogs. Humph. Rub harder." Rufus dismissed the issue with a shrug of uncomprehending distaste, and closed his eyes for a few moments to better enjoy his smoke and the attentions Tseng was paying to his feet. His snapped upright a second later as some thought weasled into him, and glanced at Tseng with naked, if morbid, interest. "Out of curiosity- you *do* eat dog, don't you, Tseng?" 

"No, sir. I don't." /Let him chew on that one awhile. As if that really made any difference to anyone.../ 

Oh, he knew all too well what kind of difference it made. Tseng remembered the humiliation of his infrequent trips home with an acutely masochistic clarity of memory- the whispers, the stares, the shunning. The separate chair for him at home, as the parents who had forsaken all their dreams for Tseng to give him what he most wanted struggled to still be acceptable to their people. The polite requests that he spend the night at the tiny motel in town rather than under their roof. The other set of dishes; the other washtub; the way they had ceased to call him by the name he had won for himself on his proving day, when Jshuun had hauled him from the pit and drew the tiny dot on his forehead that marked him as a man. They had dared not, they had dared not- or risk the ban themselves. Bad enough that they had continued to even see him, to associate with one who was ginluu incarnate, even if he was their only son. 

Rufus looked startled, and stretched to hide his discomfiture, rolling over to stub out the butt of his firestick with the plant as an impromptu ashtray. "You aren't into that hokey religious shit, are you? I though you would have left that crap behind when you came out into the real world! You sure don't subscribe to all that business about not using mako-powered tech or flush toilets or modern medicine." Maybe it was something he saw in Tseng's face, or maybe it wasn't, but when Rufus glanced back at him, he dropped his swaggering posture of judgement. "Well, I guess- once a Ha'ruu'djesi, always Ha'ruu'djesi, eh, Tseng?" 

To that, Tseng had no answer. That single statement of terrifying ignorance stung worse than the lash of a salted leather whip. For a second he could only sit frozen, just dimly aware of Shin-Ra swiveling around to lay his head in Tseng's lap and gliding both hands possessively down the Turk's thighs as if testing to see whether he was ready for another romp across the bed. 

/Dream on, sir,/ his mind crooned bitterly. This talking about his past had clammed his insides up so badly that Tseng wouldn't have been interested if Rufus had been sucking in his cock like a man trying to drag a car down the street by the tailpipe. Still, this was a responsibility like any other, and if he didn't shake his head clear of the toxic fumes of regret soon, he was going to have a very irate superior to deal with. 

"I supposed so, sir." He grimly forced his right hand to move and clear Rufus's soggy hair away from his face, letting his nails rake through the scalp in erotic invitation. 

"That's more like it.... I knew you'd come around eventually, Tseng." His employer winked obscenely up at him, sitting up as he rolled over and planted himself in Tseng's lap, back to shirtfront, with only an inconsequential layer of cloth between the Turk's groin and Rufus' naked ass. He knew what he was supposed to do: the clothes to be dealt with, the lube to be fetched, the sensitive places on Rufus's neck and back and inner thighs to be attended to, the few minutes of finger-fucking Shin-Ra usually needed to get himself ready. He had his assignment. Tseng pushed a few calming breaths in and out of his lungs and stirred up a smattering of random fragments of fantasy to help him along: better times with Rufus, memories of Elena, occasional guilt-ridden speculations about bedding the other two Turks... all of which were completely, utterly useless. 

Rufus twisted around in his grip and tore down Tseng's fly, muttering in annoyance as he examined what lay beneath. "Still nothing?" There was concern in the other man's voice now, and when Tseng opened his eyes he found Rufus staring right at him, all raunchy playfulness gone. He pushed himself up and away from the Turk, sitting back on his heels and glaring down at his stiff cock with absent petulance. Tseng reached for his employer a little guiltily, intending to jerk him off and give the man at least that much relief, but Rufus waved him back. "S'okay- it'll go down in a minute." He sighed gustily, absently flipped his cowlick away, and crossed his legs as he settled on the bed. "For the love of the Ancients, Tseng- what's gotten into you tonight?!" 

What could he say to that? 

"I'm sorry, sir." Tseng sat there on the bed, bloodless wet-noodle legs screaming at him to put as much distance between Rufus and himself as possible, watching his hands knot and twist around each other in his lap. A tremendous sense of failure hissed mockingly in his ears, as the howling of non-existent dogs rode shockwaves down him spine. Wrong, this was all wrong- he had left the wrong of Ruu'djesdek, the wrong of three thousand years of history and culture and exchanged it for what?- another type of wrong. Ginluu there, Ha'ruu'djesi freak here- two sides, same coin. 

It would almost be a relief to hear a dismissal, to hear Rufus order him to go off and find one of the other Turks so that he might start breaking in a new gigolo- Reno, perhaps. He was certainly younger... had more energy... Rufus might even decide that it was time for a few personnel revisions to let some fresh young blood have a chance. Tseng had no illusions that his retaining leadership of the Turks through the power changeover in the company had be due to seniority alone. 

"Tseng, if there's something wrong- some family problem or whatever- just tell me." Achingly tender arms coiled around him then, soft hands trying to massage warmth back into frozen blood and meat, the flutter of eyelashes against the side of his neck where the other man pressed his face. Tseng had miscalculated severely. It wasn't just his body Rufus sought to get at- it was his soul as well. 

"I mean it, Tseng- give. If it's so bad that it's giving you nightmares, I want to know about it. Did something happen to one of your parents?" 

Soft warm hands like iron chains. "My parents are dead, sir." 

"Shhh. Don't call me 'sir'. How long ago did they die?" Rufus' fingers pressed lightly against his cheek, willing Tseng to turn his head and look at him as he continued the interrogation. 

"Two weeks." He squeezed it out of a wooden throat, muscles painfully clenched away from the invasive ministrations of those oh-so-compassionate arms that held him. 

"TWO WEEKS AGO?!! And you didn't tell anybody?!! What happened? I would have given you leave to go home if you had asked!" 

"There was nothing to go home for, sir. The Ha'ruu'djesi took care of everything. My parents caught one of the fevers local to the area that kills particularly quickly. The Ha'ruu'djesi live so far apart that no one even knew what had happened until it was too late, and it was a week after that before they were able to get a message to me. And as you said, the Ha'ruu- we- don't believe in using medical techniques not our own." 

Lies, damn lies, all of it. Jakdi fever is a slow torture, beginning with lesions on the skin and blackening fingernails, and ending with pinprick wormholes tunneling through the brain. The victims go mad long before the ordeal ends, and Ha'ruu'djesi custom was to shoot the afflicted like foamsick dogs to put them out of their misery. Left alone, it could take a person nearly a month to die from it. 

His parents had lived in the center of Ruu'djesdek: there was no way the other Ha'ruu'djesi could not have known what was happening- but who would go to the aid of ones suspected of being ginluu? Eventually things had been 'dealt with' when carrion birds managed to break through the reed roof on the house to get at the putrefying feast inside. News of this had crawled back to him through word of mouth from the dog's wool traders, until it finally reached Midgar two nights before. 

"Tseng- I'm so sorry about all this." Rufus gripped him like a soft toy, ensnaring arms still holding him prisoner, binding him to this bed and this life, now that all ties to his people had been severed, "If I had known, I would never have given you such a hard time tonight. No wonder you're not in the mood! I still can't believe that it took them so long to get word to you- maybe if they had a phone system out there, they might have even been able to get to your family in time. That such a thing could happen today..." 

Rufus was up on his knees suddenly, turning Tseng around to face him. The Turk almost flinched at the earnest compassion glowing behind those eyes, ignorant and wanting to help in a way he could do without. "Tseng- look. You're one of my best people. You've been with me from the time Heidegger hired you, and you've stayed loyal to me all the while my dad still had control of the corporation. I knew I could count on you to get the Turks through that Sephiroth mess. I'm not my father, Tseng- and I reward my people well when they do right by me. Your parents died because the stupid Ha'ruu'djesi are so fucking isolated out there that they don't have proper medical care or a proper com system- they're too busy mooching around and fucking dogs or something. I have the authority to have a reactor built in Ruu'djesdek, if you want. I can have a hospital built, send doctors from Midgar- whatever you think is necessary. Let us do something for you, Tseng: you've more than proven your loyalty to Shin-Ra." 

/I'm Shin-Ra's bitch, you mean. Loyal as a dog./ "Thank you, but no thank you, sir." Two sides, one coin- a price paid for freedom from, a price paid for freedom to. Tseng knew it with ugly clarity: the true meaning of ginluu. It oozed from every kind word in his employer's mouth, in every pitying caress of Rufus' hands. It was more than sacred pollution; it was prostitution of the soul. 

For now, he gently dislodged the clinging arms, and leaned over to give his employer the expected kiss of gratitude. He knew what was in his job description. 

/And if you want to do me a favor, sir- don't do me any favors./ 


End file.
